When I was a kid a bunch of us were camped out on the Fourche river north of town. We were drinking pretty heavy and decided we would fish a little with night crawlers. One of the guys caught what we thought was a 2 1/2 pound catfish. He swung it around and landed it on the bank and it raised up on 4 legs and ran down the bank and jumped back in. He pulled it back out and we shined a light on it and it was a huge salamander. We cut the line and let it go. It was an Ozark Hellbender. Protected species and rare. I have seen one other one in my life. It scared the heck out of us when the catfish took off on 4 legs in the moonlight.
Never caught one but I've seen hellbenders in Wva trout fishing a few times. Kinda wild looking, one evening at dark we were leaving and a friend of mine picked up his stringer with a hellbender hanging off one of his trout.
